Turning Teachers Into Children

Take a look at that video above. It was shot inside a teacher development class in the Chicago public school system. It’s short, just over a minute, but it’s enough. If I were one of those teachers, I would want to pick up my chair and throw it at the instructor. Why on earth would one want to be a teacher when the administration for which one works infantilizes one to that degree? It is incredibly degrading.

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48 Responses to Turning Teachers Into Children

Our gracious host has this exactly right. Further, this stuff is not only degrading to teachers, its useless to students. Effective teaching requires self-motivation and creative evaluation of each student in real time, not totalitarian lock-step.

One of the biggest problems in employement today is losing sight of a basic fact:

The truly horrible thing about this? That administrator thinks that’s how education should be; had any of the teachers sitting in front of her tried that in class, the class would have dissolved within 20 seconds.
The teachers may not be the problem; the grotesque, leprous growth of administrators certainly is.

This form of teaching is degrading when used with children as well. No one should have to sit through that. (Sometimes when I have teacher trainings, I use them as an opportunity to be reminded of how not to treat my students.)

Contrast the video with a traditional presentation where the person in the front of the room talks for many minutes, and the captive audience sits and listens with all apparent seriousness and maturity. That might look better to you, but it would likely be highly ineffective. I’m actually optimistic that the “repeat after Me” session helped the participants get their footing in advance of activities where the teachers got to express themselves individually.

But what do I know? What does Rod Dreher know? I’m pretty sure this stuff is hard to do well, maybe we who don’t have to do it can lighten up on the criticism. And hidden camera stunts do tend to be degrading, don’t they? That’s the intent, isn’t it?

Maybe if teachers hadn’t turned themselves into an anti-intellectual, anti-accountability, anti-reform, over-tenured, blame-the-parents, poor-kids-can’t-learn, over-unionized government monopolgy caste over the past couple of decades, I could feel a little more sympathy.

This really is one of those places where we Americans need to suck it up & see where other cultures or nations are doing it better — in particular, where they treat their teachers as respected & well-compensated professionals, and not the equivalent of McDonald’s grill line employees with chalk.

Interestingly, I was just saying to a colleague that at our faculty meetings, the teachers behave embarrassingly like students — showing up late, talking during presentations, asking questions the presenter JUST answered. So although this administrator obviously went way too far, it could be that she just snapped after one too many “What page are we on?”s.

[NFR: Oh, wow. I hadn't imagined that adults -- and teachers, at that! -- would behave this way. -- RD]

the fact is the so-called teaching professionals know precious little about how to teach effective instructional techniques- it is usually a progression of the current fad. Just revisit the entire “whole language” fiasco. It was promoted with all the, then current, buzz words-”holistic”, “child centered”, “developmentally appropriate” etc. If you don’t remember, it was big on invented spelling & it disdained phonics. Early on it was implemented in CA which precipitously tanked in the reading scores of its children. The only problem with the effort was the technique couldn’t teach a dog to bark.

Tuning out garbage like this is the first thing that I counsel to beginning teachers. Seriously. Probably the only time I’ve ever revolted against something on my job was openly rejecting a “consultant” in a professional development.

P.s. Rod, the reason nobody throws a chair at the teacher (who, judging by her monotone voice, is as bored as everyone else) is that those who are not members of a protected class fear that, if they do so, they will be fired. Those who are members of a protected class fear that, if they do so, they will have to sit through ANOTHER session, this one on Violence In The Workplace.

You must be kidding! Children past the third grade in elementary school don’t tolerate such a thing. Only people whom years in educational institutes has made sheeples would tolerate this. Good for you that you are homeschooling your children. (by the way, have those people who always nag and complain about homeschooling seen this video? They should).

This is insanity… I watched “Homeland” a few weeks ago, and one of the major themes in that show is the main protagonist’s struggle with bipolarity. Once in a while she goes manic or depressed or whatever. Considering the kind of things that happened to the woman, I feel depression and/or mania were perfectly appropriate reactions; but be that as it may.

What struck me is the kind of attitude everyone adopted toward her when she got sick. They began to treat her as a slow child or a demented dotard. And I felt sick just watching people treat her like that.

I can’t think of many things more degrading than being treated like a child. I’d even say that it’s offensive to a child (older than, say, 5) to treat it like a child.

“Interestingly, I was just saying to a colleague that at our faculty meetings, the teachers behave embarrassingly like students”

Oh, the teachers can be much, much worse. This group seems to be of the broken spirits variety, rather than the obnoxious, entitled variety. Seems like they just want to get through this ordeal and back to the classroom. I much prefer a teachers who are willing to plod through the drudgery rather than indulge their inner Bolshevik in some work-to-rule type BS. Give me these guys any day, though I admit it’s a grim alternative.

The instructor in this video clip is most certainly modeling the exact instructional methods that these teachers are being expected to use with their students. She then leads them into turning to a partner to share this information (good old “pair and share”), as they are expected to have their own students do.

These teachers have most likely already put in a full day of teaching and are spending the late afternoon sitting here.

The idea is, of course, to make sure everyone being instructed in a large group (whether students or adults) is hearing and understanding the concepts being explained, such as they are.

It’s old-fashioned, rote “drill and kill”, offered in recent years as an antidote for all that came in the 3 or 4 previous decades,
during which many students in many or most classrooms grew more and more detached, distracted and disruptive.

PD sessions often model the methods that teachers are expected to use themselves in the classroom.

In education people are always trying new stuff and when that doesn’t work they try more stuff and when that doesn’t work they go back to other, older stuff and re-vamp it a little and when that doesn’t work…

I have seen stuff like this in a lot of “group activities” and “workshops.” What I think happens is that these “consultants” come from a background of working with children, and because that isn’t satisfying or lucrative — or if they just aren’t good at it — they transition to these consulting roles but never figure out how to interact with large groups of adults. Because the gravy train of these training classes never ends, they never figure out how bad they are at their jobs or how much the attendees dislike them.

And gatherings of professionals in this field tend to have the same background/behavior, so they think what they’re doing is normal.

[NFR: I had to sit through a "diversity training" course back in the 1990s with a bunch of fellow journalists. We were treated like children, and rebelled. The funniest and most effective rebel was an openly gay black guy. The instructor became so unnerved that at lunchtime, she resigned. We didn't have to go back. -- RD]

I really don’t see what the big problem is here. The trainer asked those teachers to model a technique to use with young students (presumably K-2?) and they are play-acting as the students. She is demonstrating the technique. This video would look very different if it started about one minute earlier.

The only thing worse than “pair and share” is ” and now we’re going to form into groups…”. I’d rather go to the dentist.

Oddly enough, I just finished an auditing class, for my job, taught by an adult to adults. So the difference between this class and mine was really striking. Susie, our (pseudonymous) teacher, had done the same job she was teaching for a long time and knows it inside out, and yet, she sure didn’t speak in a monotone. She was intensely interested in her subject and sounded like it. She worked the sample audits (pulled out of the database of real, big-dollar contracts) right along with us and made the occasional typo right along with us. The contrast between the class in the video and all us adults engaged in those audits was striking. The kicker? At most companies Susie would never be hired to teach. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever known and has a gift for teaching, but she’s not a corporate mannequin. She’s an outspoken grandmother with a heavy accent.

The woman lecturing seems to be African Ameican. I’ve noticed that her style of teaching/lecturing is not completely unusual for black people. I experienced something similar when I had to take the GRE at a my second choice location, which was at a mostly African American university. The people administering the test were all African American women and they treated us like 2nd graders.

Eliana, it’s amazing to me how many Common Core opponents actually think that this is how students should be taught. None of this newfangled “critical thinking” stuff, they say.

The reason that this is ineffective, by the way, is that it’s quite possible to robotically repeat the words with the teacher and let your mind do something completely different. If you want to train a parrot to talk, this is a great method. For kids, not so much.

Glad to see so many teachers read this blog! And this isn’t the worst one I’ve seen. I have been handed crayons, colored pencils and posterboard before being assigned to a group. However, I have to say that these programs rely entirely on teachers’ internalized groupthink: nobody ever checks to see if you’ve implemented any of this.

I re-read my previous comment and want to clarify that I didn’t mean to suggest that the woman’s style of teaching/leading is typical of African Americans. I’ve attended many lectures and meetings led by African Americans where everyone was treated like an adult and the experience was very productive.

Things like this happen because of voters like you and me. For decades, both parties have meddled with education on the theory that politicians who have never set foot in a classroom know better than 25-year veteran teachers. We, the American people, who are suspicious of any claims of expert knowledge, love demonizing teachers and have repeatedly rewarded politicians for peddling one crackpot educational panacea after another.

The mere fact that you can make a pretty good guess about a person’s politics by asking what he thinks about teaching phonics should alarm everyone. Education needs to be depoliticized. I would really like to see politicians and amateurs stop bloating about how to “save our schools.”

Teacher here too! I would actually think this as a better one because it is mindless and I could grade papers while pretending to pay attention.
I would have received an “unsatisfactory” for teaching a lesson like that, and put on serious probation…..

The worst thing is they often take away our planning periods to give us lectures like this. So the time when we could be planning our lessons more effectively we have to sit and listen to this kind of infantile crap.

Imagine, Rod, if TAC regularly took away an hour or two of your day to drill you in simplistic journalism codes that you had already learned when you were 18. That’s what it’s like to be a teacher these days. And because both Parties are invested in this crap, we have to keep putting up with it. I wish I could show you the hour long online training I had to do yesterday on “fire extinguisher safety” and “slips, trips, and falls.” It included such enlightening tips as “don’t walk fast over a wet floor.” I spent an hour of my day on that crap yesterday.

I’m pretty sure this stuff is hard to do well, maybe we who don’t have to do it can lighten up on the criticism.

Not at all. Those who claim to be experts demonstrate the legitimacy of their expertise by presenting the wisdom they have acquired to all the rest of us in a manner that makes sense and can by understood by the uninitiated. If they can’t do that, we double down on the criticism, and they deserve it.

Ditto for expert witnesses in court. Never, never, never allow them to say “I’m an expert take my word for it.”

The trainer asked those teachers to model a technique to use with young students (presumably K-2?) and they are play-acting as the students. She is demonstrating the technique.

If that is true, its a very bad technique. I wouldn’t have put up with it in kindergarten. You can mindlessly repeat this kind of garbage at any age level without learning or internalizing anything.

[NFR: I had to sit through a "diversity training" course back in the 1990s with a bunch of fellow journalists. We were treated like children, and rebelled. The funniest and most effective rebel was an openly gay black guy. The instructor became so unnerved that at lunchtime, she resigned. We didn't have to go back. -- RD]

That is hilarious. I would love to hear more of the story some time. As a white woman married to a black man, I can get almost as annoyed with white pc anti-racist* posturing as I do with stupid “race realists.” Neither group seems to actually know any black people outside of work or academic settings on the one hand, or driving through the ghetto on the other hand. Good for Gay Black Guy! I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting!

*I’m not against anti-racism in principle – I hate racism, and folks have a lot of learning and unlearning to do – but diversity workshops are about the worst way I can think of to go about it.

[NFR: The best thing he did was to discover, in the course of a stupid group exercise in the Evils Of Labeling. Participants didn't know their own labels, and had to react to others in the group exercise based on the others' labels. Their "label" was a card they held up to their foreheads so others could see, but not themselves. The exercise assignment was for them to discuss where the group is going to lunch, and do so in a way that treats everyone in the group according to their label (e.g., "Dumb," "Elderly," etc.). Anyway, this guy was sharp, and figured out right away that his label was "Boss," because others deferred to him. He cut off the discussion by saying, "OK, we're going to eat at [most expensive restaurant in town], and Stein, you’re paying because you’re the Jew.” Stein (and everybody else; we all knew each other) nearly fell out of their chairs laughing. The facilitator nearly wept. It was brilliant! — RD]

I have not only never had to sit through anything like that, I’ve never heard of anyone having to sit through anything like that. When we teachers mock professional development, we’re bitching about having to sit through some presentation by a consultant or coach who taught middle school for a few years, and has nothing more than chutzpah and a powerpoint deck that someone else put together on the New New thing.

I suspect, as some have already mentioned, that the coach is modeling a method for elementary school teachers–that is, they are playing the part of students to give themselves a sense of what the lesson would sound like. It’s still stupid, but not as absurd as the idea that professionals would tolerate being treated like that.

“I suspect, as some have already mentioned, that the coach is modeling a method for elementary school teachers–that is, they are playing the part of students to give themselves a sense of what the lesson would sound like.”

You may be correct, but the woman didn’t have to use such a long, drawn-out sentence to demonstrate the technique. I would think that the tediousness of the demonstration would discourage any teacher from wanting to use it (which is probably a good thing, but would seem to undermine her purpose for demonstrating it). Lastly, the woman didn’t seem to have any self-awareness of how her demonstration might feel insulting to the teachers or a sense of humor about how stupid it was.

Twenty-plus years a teacher–this stuff is real, folks, and not limited to CPS. I’ve been in PD where we had to raise our hands when the presentor raise their hand, waiting until everyone quieted; staff meetings where we were given assigned seats and asked to spend the first few minutes responding to an (inane and oh-so-obvious) writing prompt; workshops where we also paired and shared. Now none of those strategies is wrong in and of itself, but the administration’s implication seems to be that unless they ‘manage’ our behavior so strictly, we will not understand how to use the strategies, nor will we pay attention. And, in my case, they’re correct. Because I refuse to treat my high school students in such a demeaning manner–and I don’t want them to resent my content, as so many teachers have come to resent PD.

One, the teaching ‘method’ being demonstrated.
Two, the politics of American education.

On the first, wisdom demands that we be slow to speak with too much certainty about what is happening. My guess is that those who have suggested above that a technique is being modeled are right. These teachers are probably “practicing” a mode of recall.

If that is the case, I would argue that it is a legitimate method in certain contexts (context is everything in education) and to a certain extent.

At first, I thought she was teaching apposition, which is what I am doing right now. I can see the value in showing students apposition and then having them repeat the definition aloud. We all remember better what we repeat and what we use more senses to notice.

The problem arose (and even this I say with hesitation, not having seen what came before or after) when the repetition became so long as to no longer help the memory.

So on the technique, I would suggest that if her goal is to model for them a method of remembering, it’s a legitimate goal and a legitimate method, but it’s badly done (or seems, given the evidence we have, to be so).

On the politics, the very worst element of education in our country is probably the impossibility of rapid feedback mechanisms for the teacher.

The reason that the smartest and most revolutionary educators in America are home schooling moms is only partly socio-economic. It’s mostly 1. they love their children so much that they jump off a very scary cliff to teach them, 2. they know they need divine help, and 3. (most pertinent here) they get continual, rapid feedback.

In our schools, the art of teaching is buried under rules, regulations, non-educational goals, techniques that are more administrative than pedagogical, and curricula that are produced by companies that are paid for ideology and testing and not for pedagogical soundness or effectiveness and all of which stand between the teacher and her student instead of mediating their relationship.

There is little incentive for an administrator to equip his/her teachers to teach well and the only incentive for teachers arises when they actually, practically love the students (by which I don’t mean, God save us, want to “change a life forever”) so much that they are willing to go their own way. They usually have to start private schools, like Marva Collins.

Not only is there no professional incentive, there is also little room for feedback that matters – and even less for feedback that can be responded to.

Teachers are slaves to a system that produces slave-minds.

That’s not hyperbole. It’s intended as a non-aggressive, compassionate diagnosis of the tragic state we are in.

Free people rule themselves and it takes years to learn to rule yourself. It is, one might say, an apprenticeship. Only masters (self-masters, in this case) can equip masters. The American school tried to create an alternative to that with a centralized, progressive system.